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A Clinton Strategy?

If you listened in on a nearly hour-long conference call with Senator Hillary Clinton’s campaign officials this morning, you could see at least an eight-point strategy for trying to bounce back after 10 straight losses to Senator Barack Obama:

1. Use two upcoming debates between now and March 4 to draw a strong contrast with Mr. Obama. “We’ve seen dramatic changes when that’s happened,” said Mark Penn, her chief strategist and pollster. (Translation: expect her to unload everything she has on him.)

3. Repeat those bits of “new information” that have already emerged: that Mr. Obama has “lifted” portions of his inspirational speeches from other politicians; that he backed out of a promise to take public financing for his campaign; that after a year of not remembering the details, Mr. Obama did recall that before he bought his home in Chicago, he toured it with Tony Rezko, a fund-raiser who was known to be the subject of a grand jury investigation, to get his opinion of the property.
4. Replay repeatedly an embarrassing television clip
of a supporter of Mr. Obama being unable to name any legislative achievements by Mr. Obama.

5. Hope that Senator John McCain, the all-but-certain Republican presidential nominee, can raise serious doubts about Mr. Obama’s experience and readiness to be commander-in-chief.

6. Have Mrs. Clinton focus intensely on the economy and drive home her plans to create jobs and jump-start the economy in an attempt to retrieve the blue-collar voters who form her natural constituency but who have been deserting her in the last few contests.

7. Explain previous losses by saying the Obama campaign outspent them and use this as a plea for more money — even $5, which she asked for today.

8. Not be drawn into the Obama camp’s assessment that Mrs. Clinton needs to win 65 percent of the vote in Ohio, and not even saying that they have to win Ohio, only that it is “critically, critically important.”

Several questioners noted that the campaign has already been doing a number of these things and that they haven’t worked. The campaign officials brushed past that idea.

Harold Ickes, a top adviser who is rounding up delegates for Mrs. Clinton, said that — by their estimation — she trailed Mr. Obama by about 75 delegates now but predicted that strong showings in Ohio and Texas on March 4 would help her “close the gap substantially” by the time Puerto Rico votes in June. At that point, he said, neither candidate would be able to clinch the nomination without superdelegates, or, as he calls them, automatic delegates.

He was not asked about a report in Politico in which Roger Simon said the Clinton campaign was planning to raid delegates already pledged to Mr. Obama. (Reporters asked about it repeatedly during Tuesday’s conference call and the campaign spokesmen denied it – to wit, “We have not, are not, and will not pursue the pledged delegates of Barack Obama,” Howard Wolfson said. Though as of late yesterday, Mr. Simon was sticking to his account about their intent to go after the so-called pledged delegates — not the superdelegates — who in reality are not pledged at all.)

“Senator Obama is not running on legislative achievements, he’s not running on his preparedness to be commander-in-chief, he’s not running on his experience in government. He’s running on the power of his oratory and the strength of his promises. And then voters see his oratory being lifted, his promises being broken and surrogates being unable to name any legislative accomplishments.”

well if all else fails with hillary, you know, if the mud slinging and name calling don’t work, maybe she can try pulling hair… Not only has she lost votes, she is losing respect. I am a woman and am embarrassed by her. She is becoming he epitomy of why men think a woman cannot run the country… She herself is not ready for this.

Wow. This sounds like a campaign that is truly and utterly desperate. How can Clinton say that she can unite our country when she plans to go “all negative, all the time?” I can’t for the life of me imagine voting for her.

How long will it take for you to see the writing on the wall? Hillary repeatedly demonstrates that she is only concerned about winning. She is not truly concerned about the voters as she did not have the decency to thank the hundreds of thousands of voters who braved the arctic temperatures to vote for her. She did not show basic courtesy by refusing to congratulate Obama until after her speech, and probably only because her staff did a poll and the results told them she had better do it. Is this who you want to lead our country? Let go of your hate and join the good side of the force!

Most of those strategies sound desperate and mean. I hope she talks about health care, so we can remember that she was put in charge of reforming it, and in eight years, the Clinton administration didn’t get much done.

4. Try and find a single Clinton surrogate who has been able to name one thing “35 years of service” has amounted to, or name ONE single piece of legislation that bears the name of this most “experienced” candidate from New York.

If they have any doubt, they should play the immediate aftermath of Chris Matthews’ sandbagging that Obama surrogate last night, as he has done before.

Not only did Keith Olbermann have to remind Matthews that he was not on “Hardball” but was doing election returns, leaving Matthews being visibly shocked at the reminder.

Keith asked Matthews, the supposed political insider, to name one legislative accomplishment by ANY Senator over the past seven years, and Matthews couldn’t come up with one!

The derisive laughter from the off-camera crew spoke volumes at Matthews’ comeuppance.

I believe your delegate summary page is incorrect in this regard: Iowa Republican delegates are not bound, and thus appropriately not included in your totals. Iowa Democratic delegates are bound, if I’m not mistaken, and therefore should be included.

In Washington State, the Democratic caucuses went three or four to one for Obama. But the Democratic primary, in which hundreds of thousands more citizens voted, split about evenly. Still, on the grounds that the Democratic primary “doesn’t count,” all the news media ignored the significance of the huge increase of support for Clinton reflected by the primary as opposed to the caucuses. This is, or should be, NEWS, especially considering the sweep of Obama’s caucus victories in other states where similar revisions of relative support for Obama and Clinton might have appeared had there been primaries in those states. This gap between caucus results and broader voting patterns in Washington State and perhaps elsewhere deserves attention and analysis by voters and by the media.

Eliminate any dissenting views on your blogs in case some of the dwindling HRC believers should stumble across them and change their vote for Obama.

Funny how they just wiped out the Texas and Ohio Post….just couldn’t handle the heat. I love the hypocracy of this paper which puts itself out as some great defender of free speech yet does everything they can to stifle the views of the people who come to these blogs and dare to differ from the anointed wisdom of the greay lady….

To paraphrase a line from Jersey (see you can’t even hang the plagiarism rap on me!): HRC and the New York Times, perfect together!

The people are speaking loud and clear…..
Obama2008….fired up and ready to go!

What are Hillary Clinton’s notable accomplishments as a Senator? She managed to finagle her way onto the Armed Services Committee in preparation for a White House run? She’s had three major issues in her political history. 1st- she failed on healthcare, by running some hyper secret, jam it through, Cheney like operation, except she wasn’t as effective a political operator as Cheney, so the “jam through” failed. 2nd- she made the wrong vote on the biggest foreign policy blunder in modern history, and then somehow decided to give the Bush/Cheney team another blank check on Iran. 3rd- in the most important executive position in her life history, running her own campaign for the White House, she’s been outrun, out raised, out strategized, and out campaigned. Why does this qualify her to be chief executive of the nation? Because she’s memorized her policy initiatives? This is about leadership, and being able to look forward, not back, to see the future obstacles, not recount her own mistakes, which have been numerous, particularly on the biggest issues.

All strategy and no substance will not help Mrs. Clinton.
There is only one dynamic that can turn the tide and that is
RELEASE THE INCOME TAX RETURNS and OPEN THE CLINTON LIBRARY FILES WITH LIST OF DONORS. When the electorate evaluates these factors there will be only two choices: if the record is damning, then forget everything — nothing will work then. If the record is a positive, then let the record speak for itself and Mrs. Clinton will live another day. But make no mistake — the clinton record must be vetted by the democrats before another single vote is cast.

Oh pleeeeeeeease, ” – to alter the course of the campaign” ?? L-I-S-T-E-N, the campaign has ALREADY BEEN ALTERED. The WRITING-HAS-BEEN-ON-THE-WALL for sometime now and it R-E-A-D-S: ”HRC, PACK – UP – AND – GO – HOME; YOUR DIVISIVE, MUCK RAKING CAMPAIGN IS OVER !!”

One word to sum up this new Clinton strategy, DESPERATION. A good way to learn how a presidential candidate would lead and govern is how she/he manages his/her presidential campaign. Hillary has not only mishandled the over $100 million budget for her campaign, she has failed to sell voters on the idea that she can beat McCain in November and govern the country on day one.

Her boat is sinking and she’s refusing to accept it. Rather than preserve her place in history and secure her legacy as a respectable First Lady and US Senator, she’s determined to divide the Democratic party.

President Obama drew criticism on Thursday when he said, “we don’t have a strategy yet,” for military action against ISIS in Syria. Lawmakers will weigh in on Mr. Obama’s comments on the Sunday shows.Read more…